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Michelangelo and the Medieval Pietà: The Sculpture of Devotion or the Art of Sculpture?

1995; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/767122

2169-3099

Joanna E. Ziegler,

Historical Art and Architecture Studies

This essay compares Michelangelo's first Pietà with its medieval predecessors from the southern Low Countries. The purpose is to suggest that in reacting to Flemish models Michelangelo remained consistent in his views on Flemish art. In the particular ways he departed from those Pietàs Michelangelo radically redefined the enterprise of making Pietà sculptures and, hence, redefined the nature of the "art" itself. He did so by contrast with the Flemish works: Michelangelo's core figures are inviolable (due to the change of material from wood to marble) and resistant to the physical transformations the Flemish works have undergone due to changing ritual and devotional agendas across time. Seeing these changes can shed light on the question of whether there was "art" before the Renaissance because they point up the greater object quality of Michelangelo's sculpture, with its emphasis on material and authorship, in contrast with the devotion-bound and transformable physical nature of the Low Country examples.